Archives for April 8, 2012

‘Milan Lucic’s bulldozing of Miller and the Sabres’ lack of response to their franchise goalie getting run started a tailspin that lasted more than two months. They entered the Boston beatdown with a 10-5 record, but they won just nine of the next 33 games.’

‘The season started heading south Jan. 7. In the final 38 games of the season, Vanek scored just seven times and recorded 21 points, including two assists in Saturday’s 4-3 shootout loss in Boston. He had skids of seven, four and three games without a point.’

‘”I thought during this season that perhaps I should have done a few more games than I did,” said Jeanneret, who worked 39 home games and 18 road games this season. “When you pick the games at the start of the season it all looks great. Then in January I had 17 days off. I spent some of them in Florida, I spent some of them with my wife yelling at me around the house, saying ‘Why aren’t you working?’‚”‘

‘Boston would not go down quietly, however, as Seguin’s 2nd of the game cut the deficit to a goal about one minute after Pominville scored. About two and a half minutes later, Brad Marchand shoveled a shot past Enroth to tie the score 3-3. The two sides skated to a scoreless overtime before Patrice Bergeron notched the lone shootout goal to lift Boston to victory.’

‘Last season the Sabres went on this big run and got away with it, no team in NHL history has done it two years in a row and the Sabres won’t be the first. Thomas Vanek said it best, “We’re here to lead this team and we failed. I needed to be one of the guys that needed to keep going and be a leader and I didn’t.”’

‘“It’s frustrating, it sucks any word you can find it’s out there. I think the standards have to be higher around here, we have to find a way to be better. It’s unacceptable to be out in the position that we’re in right now and disappointing we came up short.” Pominville added, “We gave ourselves a chance, we lost a game in a tough way where we had the lead and ended up losing, but you can look at that game or you can look at games earlier on in the season. We’re probably going to pinpoint the one in Philly, but I don’t know if it’s fair to say because we win a couple of those games early on and we’re not even in this position and we’re not on the outside looking in.”’